Momo

‘What happens when my time has run out?’ ‘Then you will go back through time … far away from here where the music is coming from.’

With these words, Master Hora falls asleep and time stops across the world. Only Momo is able to find her way through this state of stasis: she outwits the Men in Grey, who smoke cigars made from the dried petals of hour-lilies (representing time) and so slowly extinguish the life of humanity. She forces open the Time savings bank and frees the millions of hour-lilies trapped within restoring time to the world.

Wilfried Hiller has always mistrusted opera written in the classical style and searched for unorthodox instrumentation options. For example, Momo’s initial encounter with the wise tortoise is sketched out on an oboe d’amore, a quiet roll on the cymbal and pizzicato from the cellos, while the Men in Grey are depicted by the chilly brilliance of an organ cluster. Only in the Niemals-Gasse [Never Lane] where Momo is being pursued by the Men in Grey, does the entire orchestra hammer out chords in triple forte. The charcter of Master Hora is not an individual figure, but is represented by the chorus. The composer specifies that an actress should play the role of Momo.

The setting of Michael Ende’s novel is the continuation of a long-term artistic partnership between Hiller and Ende, which has continued despite the death of the author in 1995. Hiller produced an affectionate portrait of his friend in Gigi the songwriter. During their artistic collaboration, Ende sang melodies which the composer noted down. The pizzicato in cellos and double basses is a quotation of the guitar as played with two fingers by the author.